In a follow up correspondence re dynamical research in education he writes:

Fred:

I would love to come to Florida, but I am now in Erlangen, Germany
(just north of Nuremberg) where my wife has taken a position as
principal of the middle school at an international school (Franconian International School -fred). I am now
teaching online classes, writing, and developing proposals for school
reform and revisioning projects.

In my opinion, the expertise that folks in this group can bring to the
study of schooling is absolutely essential. In my classes, I make the
distinction between assessments that take a picture versus make a movie
(i.e., provide detail about a point in time versus identify a
trajectory and tell a story). A dynamic analysis of student learning
would add immensely to our understanding of school learning.

A major issue is the amount of data points necessary for a time series
analysis. Teachers are not trained in assessment and measurement and,
therefore, data they acquire have challenges with reliability and
validity. My hope is that increasingly powerful technology (faster
computational speed, higher internet bandwidth) will provide
opportunities to develop continuous assessment instruments and
procedures that allow for collection and analysis on a daily, weekly,
biweekly, monthly, etc. schedule. Teachers can then be provided with a
much more rich formative evaluation feeback process that will allow
them to watch change in trajectories as they make changes in their
educational practice.

I'm not trying to make this point in this paper, but I am advocating
the establishment of a decison-making process and the systematic
collection of student classroom behavior that will make this analysis
of trajectory a natural next step.

Then there are issues of norm-referenced versus criterion-referenced
evaluation issues and the wide disparity in establishing standards or
expectations for student achievement to deal with. And the horrible
working conditions for teachers that leads to 50% of women and 75% of
men who earn a teaching degree and certificate to leave the profession
within 5 years. And the difficulty in getting Alternative Certification
Teachers up to speed quickly; 80% of them leave the classroom within 3
years.

Ahh, so many issues, so few resources.